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This Jag's clock kept working long after the rest of the car's electrical components failed. Photo by Murilee Martin

Car Clock of the Week: Kienzle, 1976 Jaguar XJ-S

Many Jags of the 1970s and 1980s had these German-made clocks.

October 30, 2017

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I look at the dashboard areas of a lot of junkyard cars, and so I have become something of a car-clock aficionado. We have once again entered an era in which many cars come with analog clocks (after a good 25 years of the digital-clock doldrums), but the most interesting clocks tend to come from the 1955-1985 period. Last week, we admired a very reliable Japanese clock of the mechanical-digital school, and now it's the turn of a classy German clock from the depths of the British Malaise Era.

The depreciation curve on this one flattened out in about 1983. Photo by Murilee Martin

The map-light switch to the right of the clock was made by Joe Lucas, Prince of Darkness. Photo by Murilee Martin

Most of the electrical components in a 1976 British Leyland car came from the candlelit, dirt-floored lean-tos of The Prince of Darkness, where angry drunks hammered out switches, relays, connectors, and other failure-prone bits. This clock, however, was made by Kienzle Uhren, in Germany. I have several of these clocks, which use the electrical-spring-winder mechanism favored by most Detroit car clocks of the time, and all of them work. They don't keep accurate time, but they'll get the job done for many decades if you don't mind losing or gaining an hour here and there.